1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the conversion of source data into a document, such as for example, the printing of a document on paper or some other readable medium, from source data such as an electronic data file. A typical example of a source data file representing a document is an electronic data file, created using a word processing program, and which may be embodied by printing onto paper, or display on a computer monitor, for example.
In this specification the term “document” is intended to be interpreted broadly, to encompass within its scope any assimilable manifestation of source data. Thus a “document” may be embodied for visual assimilation (printed on paper, displayed on a monitor), aural (on audio tape) or tactile assimilation (e.g. the printing of Braille), and while printing of a document may indicate one manner in which a document may be embodied (i.e. on tangible “hard” media such as paper), it is not the only way of creating a document from a source data file. The process of converting source data into a document varies widely in dependence upon what is known as the “device implementation” of the source data, that is to say the genus of document to be created (e.g. visual, or tactile), and the specific parameters of the medium on which the document is to be embodied (e.g. in the case of printing, large paper, small paper, etc. . . . , or even printing on some other medium such as for example a carpet).
2. Description of Related Art
In the case of printing source data onto paper (or some other printable medium), it is known to connect one or more elements of computing capability (e.g. elements which include both processing and storage capability in any form—e.g. shift registers—being classifiable as either a storage element, or part of a processor) to an electromechanical device adapted to deposit ink onto paper, known in the art as a print engine, in order to produce a printed document. There are a number of different generea of print engine. One genus comprises a print-head supported on a carriage adapted to move laterally relative to an advancing page, so that marks may be deposited on any part of the page by a suitable combination of a lateral motion of the carriage and forward motion of the page. The majority of printers of this type deposit visible indicia on a page, and so are colloquially known as an “inkjet” printer. A further genus, known as a “laserjet” printer has a rotating drum upon which ink (which as indicated above is intended to encompass toner and any other substance which may be used to create indicia, regardless of whether such indicia are visible in certain types of light) is deposited in a predetermined pattern by means of the use of electrostatic charge and a laser; subsequent contact between the surface of the drum and a page deposits the ink from the drum onto the page. In each case operation of the elements of the print engine is controlled by means of the computing elements to which they are connected, with the quality and speed of printing being dependent not only upon the print engine, but also on the operation and capability of the computing elements. Typically the various computing elements which are required in order to: (a) create a source data file; (b) transform the source data file into a set of instructions useable for controlling the print engine; and (c) control the print engine in accordance the aforementioned instructions, are distributed between different physical locations. Some are packaged with the print engine, others with a desktop computer, for example. In commercial vernacular the appliance which includes the print engine is known as a printer, regardless of how much or little computing is performed by any computing elements which may be packaged with the print engine, and operations which are performed in order to produce a printed document from, for example, a document prepared using a word processing package are known as the “print pipeline”.
In contemporary information technology, printers and computers are frequently part of a network of, inter alia, one or more other printers and computers, all of which are either interconnectable or interconnected. Thus a user (whether a human user, or computing entity) working at a particular computer will frequently have a choice of a number of printers to use in order to perform a particular print job. The selection the user makes may depend, for example, upon the size of the job, the desired quality of the job and the speed with which the job is required; in addition the user's choice may also be influenced by the availability of a particular printer and its physical proximity.